Imagine this:
Two students are screaming at one another openly on campus, the male threatening the female. Someone overhears and calls the police. The men in blue arrive in record time, guns pulled, to protect the victim. They discover that, to everyone's surprise, that these are two actors rehearsing a scene outdoors from Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind.
Misunderstanding? Sure. Not only are those who witnessed the scene traumatized, but imagine how the actors feel, being held at gunpoint, just for finding the space to rehearse a scene at a university that has limited places to rehearse.
Who is at fault?
This is just one of the provocative questions that makes the National Association for the Schools of Theatre (NAST) Conference, which I recently attended in St. Louis, so special. Educators gather from around the United States to share stories, find community, and ask questions, such as this one, that address myriad topics under the umbrella of maintaining standards in schools of theatre nationwide.
This particular scenario was discussed in a session I moderated, “Art and Wellness: The Theatre Unit as Catalyst.” In another session, theatre practitioners took a hard look at the traditional curricular titles we use in our programs, especially since so many of our graduates will find themselves not pursuing untraditional careers after leaving their institutions. And in yet a third room, you will find another group sharing best strategies for creating a culture of inclusion, belonging, and respect, all to discover the best means to nurture, not coddle, students.
Having recently served for six years on the Board of NAST and elected this year to a three-year term as the Chair of the Committee on Ethics, I am justifiably proud that Texas Tech is one of the few state universities in Texas to have all arts program accredited: dance, art, theatre, and music. But since many of you may not know what this distinction means, I thought I'd share with you why we at Tech believe this is important.
Founded in 1965, the National Association of Schools of Theatre (NAST) is an organization of schools, conservatories, colleges, and universities with approximately 193 accredited institutional members. It establishes national standards for undergraduate and graduate degrees and other credentials for theatre and theatre-related disciplines and provides assistance to institutions and individuals engaged in artistic, scholarly, educational, and other theatre-related endeavors. The National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD) began in 1981 and has 84 accredited members. If you think about the number of theatre and dance programs out there, this represents an elite handful.
To be accredited, a university must prove that it meets the stringent standards to assure that students in the arts receive the education and training they deserve, including (but not limited to) proper facilities, faculty expertise, healthy faculty-student ratios, and professional/ performance opportunities. Each school or department must apply for initial accreditation, quite an onerous task, and, if granted, the institution is reviewed again by the Commission during its fifth year of accreditation. Once membership is granted, an institution is reviewed for renewal of membership every ten years. In the Fall, our dance program will face its five-year visit, and theatre, it's ten-year visit in the Spring of 2024.
Because of COVID, many universities have had to postpone accreditation visits. For example, in our J.T. & Margaret Talkington College of Visual and Performing Arts, all Schools (Art, Music, Theatre and Dance) will all be reviewed during the 2023-24 school year.
Achieving accreditation is far from simple. But that's as it should be.
First, each of our programs must submit a self-study, a document nearing 1000 pages that describes our program, our hires, our facilities, student initiatives, student transcripts—the works! And after that, each School invites at least two NAST representatives for at least two days, where they will observe classes, rehearsals, and, ideally, performances, as well as talk to the President, the Dean, the Director, and everyone from students to faculty and staff. They do a deep dive into our School's culture to make certain that students who study at Texas Tech have the best possible experience, one that prepares them for graduation.
They listen.
They process.
They represent.
They advocate.
They recommend.
Best of all, during annual meetings, NAST offers a forum for the exchange of ideas, be it how best to recover from the pandemic to the most successful means of educating and hiring. Attendees explore all imaginable topics related, in our case, to theatre and dance education, while also training our next department leaders and re-training those who have served as leaders for some time.
Sure, the qualifications are exacting, but the rewards many. Because we have an administration at TTU who cares about excellence, they listen as NAST and NASD share ideas on how our programs can best meet these standards. One not-so-recent example is our costume shop, that many of you may remember was once housed in the basement of the old Maedgen. NAST visitors were understandably concerned about the health of such an environment, squeezed in with the air handling system below our proscenium stage, so, in my third year here, based on NAST recommendations, the university awarded us a 1-million-dollar stand-alone shop, which led, years later, as you know, to our brand-new theatre and dance complex.
Next year, as each of our programs in the arts face re accreditation, it means we take the time to examine our identity, and how it should change to best accommodate national standards of excellence. Sure, it's exhausting, but it's that good kind of exhausting, epiphanic really, because by the end of this process we know, when all is said and done, we'll be better for the effort expended.
And that's what it's all about.